The Spectator's Arts Round-up

THEATRE

Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowdon will be at the new Shaw Theatre in Euston Road on Monday (July 5) for the first performance by the professional company scheduled to play forty weeks each year at the theatre built by Camden Council primarily to give a permanent home to Michael Croft's long peripatetic National Youth Theatre. The opening production is Shaw's comedy of the American Revolution, The Devil's Disciple (cast includes : Tom Bell, Ronald Hines, Ray McAnally, Jennie Linden.) Another notable Shaw revival next week is Caesar and Cleopatra at the Chichester Festival Theatre (July 7) with John Gielgud and Anna Calder-Marshall in the title roles. At the Royal Court, Sloane Square, Peggy Ashcroft stars in The Lovers of Viorne (July 6), the Marguerite Duras play, L'Amante Anglaise, in which Madeleine Renaud played at the same theatre two years ago.

The National Theatre has A Woman Killed with Kindness, The Captain of Kopenik, The Merchant of Venice and Coriolanus in repertory at the Old Vic; and lighter-weight pieces, The Rules of the Game and Amphitryon 38 at the New.

The Royal Shakespeare Company offers Pinter's Old Times and Brook's outrageous and controversial A Midsummer's Night's Dream (the latter a sell-out) at the Aldwych; and Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice, all generally respectful Shakespearian productions, at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Hurry note : David Mercer's After Haggerty, discursive and sometimes cryptic but also savagely amusing and worth seeing, closes at the Criterion on July 10; and you have only until July 31 to see Ingrid Bergman, cool and lovely as a rose in an ice cube, in Captain Brassbound's Conversion at the Cambridge. Out of town : A Close Shave, the English premiere of Peter Meyer's translation of Feydea's Champignol Malgre Lui, opens at the Nottingham Playhouse July 10; at Leeds, the International Children's Theatre Festival (July 5-17) will include performances by the Leningrad Theatre of the Young Spectator, which will later be seen (July 19-24) in a mornings-and-afternoons season at London's Mermaid.

CINEMA

Opening next week : Escape from the Planet of the Apes (Odeon, Leicester Square); • Je t'aime, je t'aime (Paris-Pullman); Big Jake (Carlton); Diary of a Mad Housewife (Plaza); all July 8.

Pick of the runners : Death in Venice (Warner Rendezvous and Times, Baker Street), Luchino Visconti's beautiful and truthful film of the Thomas Mann story, with Dirk Bogarde as Von Aschenbach, is close to being a screen masterpiece.

ART

Tate Gallery : Constable — The Art of Nature. "It seems to me entirely proper that the national collections should from time to time prompt a fresh look at the works in their care," says director Norman Reid, and his point is splendidly made in this re-discovery of Constable : his paintings, his letters, even his old palettes are included. Queen's Gallery : The seventeenth-century Dutch old masters knew how to mix their colours, and survive a face-lift 300 years later. Royal Academy : The poster with one bare breast showing gives a hint of the new look at the Academy. Still a gallimaufry, but less cluttered and more talented than usual. Roland, Browse and Delbanco : Despite his antipathy to dealers, the late Roderic O'Conor would have been well pleased with this retrospective. Fine colourist of the Pont-Aven school (Till July 10). Victoria and Albert Museum : The Franco-Prussian War and the Commune in Caricature — a " must " for sociologists, historians and lovers of the outrageous.

BALLET

for three weeks at Sadler's Wells, the New York dance theatre of Alwin Nikolais offers a different programme each week. More traditionally, the Royal Ballet's current repertoire at Covent Garden features Apollo, Song of the Earth and Marguerite and Armand (July 2 and 6), Swan Lake (July 7) and Romeo and Juliet (July 10). Ballet Rambert is at the Cambridge Arts Theatre for a week (July 5-10).

OPERA

Royal Opera : Peter Hall's production of Tristan and Isolde, with Jess Thomas and Ludmita Dvorakova, and George Solti conducting his finest Wagner (July 3). Also in repertory: Peter Grimes (July 5 and 8), Orfeo and Eurydice (July 9). Glyndebourne : Anne Howells, Thomas Hemsley and Helge Brilioth's heroic and tender tenor, as Bacchus, are outstanding in the new production of Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos (July 3, 5, 10 and 12). Also in repertory : Cosi Fan Tutte (July 2, 4, 9 and 11).

MUSIC

The open-air concert season has begun in London without waiting for suitable weather. Saturdays at Kenwood Lakeside (Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, July 3; City of Birmingham Symphony, July 10), 8 p.m. Sundays at the Crystal Palace Concert Bowl (Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, plus a fireworks display, July 4), 7.30 p.m. Cheltenham Festival (July 2-11) celebrates three themes : Scandinavian music and musicians (Bergen Symphony, Danish String Quartet, and Blomdahl, Sibelius, Nielsen etc); new British music (Maw, Fricker, Le Fanu); and Haydn's instrumental, chamber and orchestral music (complete with lectures by Hans Keller and Sir William Glock).